Goodbye Mayuko
by lookman4590
Summary: the IT executive falls in love with his master sever . by life always find a way to turn into a living hell. when his beloved is attacked note this is a reformat of a sene form a dead fanfic called "Malice "


**AN : Sum part may sound strange. because i just changed the format and remove unnecessary reaction**

It was around 23:00 last Thursday, and I was at home watching a movie with Yuzuki. It was a cheap cyberpunk film, but it was entertaining and we were pretty into it. It was just about over when the phone suddenly rang. Long story short, it turned out to be a call from the head of Information Technologies over at Ichiban Communications. It is an internet service provider

That's the one. Well, he was quite upset, and I repeatedly had to tell him to calm down so I could make sense of what he was saying. He explained that he was in the middle of a serious crisis - one of the company's servers (which he was directly responsible for) had suddenly developed serious problems, and he had no idea what had gone wrong. All he knew was that a security breach might have been involved, since the office network's firewall had logged some strange activity immediately before the server started having trouble.

I told him that I suspected an intrusion, but it would be hard for me to guess what was wrong with the server unless I came down to the office myself. He wasn't quick to give me any details on the Persocom's condition, so I decided to get back into my work clothes and go downtown to see the poor thing myself. If the problem was serious enough to warrant a call so late, it probably needed immediate attention.

When I got to the office, the IT executive I'd spoken with was waiting outside for me. He was very agitated, and I noticed that his hands were shaking a bit. He didn't say much to me during the elevator ride upstairs, but he did thank me for coming on such short notice. When we got to our floor, he stepped out before me and opened the glass door to the server room. The network appeared to be down, as the room was completely silent. He led me over to the corner of the room, where a Persocom lay curled on the floor. She was wearing the company's uniform - a short-sleeved black shirt with a pin bearing the company's logo and a short, black skirt - and was quite pretty. The executive told me her name was Mayuko and that she was the company's principal server. She had recently taken on the customer database as well, but she had been handling it extremely well until that night. Then, after a few mild-looking firewall disturbances, she had suddenly started losing data. A lot.

I asked to see a copy of the firewall's records, and he went to retrieve them. While he was out of the room, I cautiously approached the stricken Persocom. I knelt beside her and placed my hand on her forehead. "Hey there, Mayuko," I said. "What's wrong?" She mumbled something incoherently and grabbed at my suit jacket. I could tell she was in a lot of pain, and her general distress (along with the problems the executive had described) made me strongly suspect she was hit by a shredder virus. My suspicions were confirmed when the executive returned with the firewall's event logs, which showed definite abnormal behavior that was very suggestive of a hack attack.

I recommended that we set up a closed system and at least try to get Mayuko's countermeasures running. The girl must have realized there was something very wrong at once, since she had been quick enough to disconnect herself from the network before the virus could spread further. This made my work much easier, and I commended her on her foresight. In response, she only whimpered and locked her arms around her middle. I felt so sorry for her - shredder viruses are terrible things. I wanted to work quickly so she wouldn't have to suffer much longer, so I ordered the executive to start setting up a crude, limited network that I could use to gain access to her system without infecting the rest of the office. He ran off to do this, and I was again left alone with Mayuko. I asked her what she had been doing before she was attacked, but she didn't answer - she was unable to speak. Her hard drive was making a nasty grinding sound, which almost always means big trouble. I began to doubt that I could save her.

Computer security had to do with protecting people's privacy and preventing costly attacks on business networks. It was still fascinating and important work, but it was largely impersonal - after all, whoever cried over a crashed mainframe? Now, with the advent of Persocoms, the rules have completely changed. The network can literally talk to you. It has a personality. It can feel pain. It is very close to being just as alive as we are, Kojima. That is why it bothers me to see Persocoms suffer. Why can't you understand?

There isn't much more to tell. The executive finished setting up the closed network, and I connected Mayuko to it and had a look around her hard drive. It was in a very bad state, with lots of data corruption and hundreds of bad sectors. She was running Norman Internet Security, which was still functional although failing to attack the invasion. In fact, it reacted more to me poking around in the system than it did to the virus taking it over. I checked the activity logs and discovered the name of the enemy - "Annihilator.K." Your creation, as I understand it.

I tried to get Mayuko's countermeasures to attack the malware, but no commands I tried seemed to do anything. I began to suspect that her drive was too far gone and her CPU too damaged for my actions to be of any help. I apologized to the executive, explaining that the server had taken extensive damage and would probably not make it through the night. To my relative surprise, he broke down and cried. I thought that he was worried about losing his job, so I assured him that I'd tell his superiors that the incident was an accident. This didn't seem to calm him down any, and he went over to where Mayuko lie and sat next to her. He took her in his arms and rocked her like a baby. It was a terrible sight, Kojima, and I hope you realize that you're to blame for their agony. I found out later that Mayuko and the executive had been in a relationship for more than a year, although they could only meet in private because of company regulations.

The end was horrible and drawn-out. Mayuko's system fell to pieces. First, her protection software stopped responding. Then, the hard drive stopped spinning. She lost her cooling liquid all over the floor and her CPU started to melt. That's what finally did her in. The executive was in shock, still holding her and refusing to believe the previous hours' events had actually happened. According to Ichiban, he put in his letter of resignation the next day. I, on the other hand, went home feeling drained and dejected. It never feels good to lose a fight, but I took this one personally.


End file.
